It is interesting to see how statistics skew our view of the world. An article in another fire service publication started a paragraph with the following statement: "Declining numbers of volunteers and shrinking budgets in career sectors are forcing companies to consolidate or close and the fire departments to merge." On the surface, you might say that is a true statement — or at least one that we continually hear about the current status of the fire service.
I am not discounting either the dire financial straits in which some cities and fire departments find themselves or the ongoing need for recruitment and retention of volunteers. But after reading the NFPA's most recent U.S. fire department profile, I would like to look at these statistics in a bit of a new light.
I was surprised that the actual statistics show a steady number of volunteers or even a small growth in that number, compared to the overall population they cover.
There are an estimated 1,148,800 firefighters in the United States. Of these, 323,350 (28%) are categorized as career firefighters and 825,450 (72%) are considered volunteer. There are an estimated 30,185 fire departments in the United States, with 13% of those career or mostly career, protecting 62% of the total population. The other 87% of all fire departments are mostly or all volunteer and serve 38% of the population — by my estimates 124 million of the estimated 310 million people in the United States. That translates into a ratio of one firefighter per 1,000 citizens, and that has remained steady over the past three years, with an overall increase since the year 2000.
Fire departments cover a variety of areas. These range from a couple square miles per fire station with fire hydrants on every corner in the more urban settings to departments similar to the one of a friend of mine living in Nevada, where his volunteer department with three stations covers more than 164 square miles and where if you want water, you have to bring it with you.
Departments may differ in tactics based on time, distance and resources such as water supply, but we seem to be battling the same types of fires.
Let's look at the latest NFPA statistics on the number of structure fires that we responded to from 2003 to 2006 across the United States. On average, there were 518,000 reported structure fires annually with 378,600 (73%) being reported in homes or residences. Of the $12.7 billion in annual direct property loss, $6.1 billion (48%) came from home fires, but these also accounted for 2,850 (84%) of the 3,400 civilian fire deaths and 13,090 (87%) of the 15,000 civilian fire injuries.
Needless to say, residential structure fires are the bread and butter of any fire department across the country, and it is the structure fire that probably remains the most challenging for adequate staffing and the most dangerous for firefighters themselves. So regardless of what area of the country or amount of territory covered by any station, the nature of the most frequent and possibly most severe fires we face remains common among all groups of firefighters.
Facing difficult times is not new for the fire service. During World War II, fire departments not only faced severe staffing shortages, but also critical resource and money shortages, as all were being diverted to the war effort. This included the inability to replace fire apparatus except in the most critical locations.
My dad was too old to serve in the military, but he was both a fire protection engineer by profession and an auxiliary firefighter for the Cincinnati Fire Department. Auxiliary firefighters were trained to do a variety of tasks during those years. My dad not only helped staff a suburban fire engine that was chronically short of manpower, but also did fire inspections — especially in defense-critical installations. These inspections were challenges because of the hastily built Quonset-hut construction and the need for fire personnel to obtain the proper clearance to visit them during their defense operations — which usually meant the plant was running three full shifts.
Since those days, volunteer, auxiliary or reserve firefighters have continued to serve in some urban areas. During one of his initial military assignments at the Norfolk Naval Base in the late 1990s, my eldest son served as a career-trained reserve firefighter for the Virginia Beach (Va.) Fire Department. He regularly road "back seat" on Engine 7. If it was fully staffed, he drove the salvage truck assigned to the station. Many other cities found that having regular augmenters assigned to a station provides the benefit of a four- or five-member engine company when, without them, they'd be understaffed.
There is no doubt that having volunteers, auxiliaries or reserves serving alongside career or paid part-time personnel can be a challenge for any fire chief. Being the chief of a combination department is the hardest challenge for anyone with five bugles — though many who have an all-career staff may dismiss what I am about to propose, not knowing how difficult it is to manage a combined staff.
Before I go forward, I'd like to stop categorizing the fire service as career and volunteer. Maybe we should categorize everyone who meets the physical and training criteria simply as "firefighters" and have the department evaluated for its ability to perform according to the accepted standards of cover. This provides a paradigm shift that could result in a whole new outlook on staffing in what might prove to be one of the most extended economic downturns since prior to the second World War.
The NFPA's recent profile of fire departments has provided the ratio of population to the number of volunteers serving today — 825,450 serving 124 million citizens. Using that same ratio, 1,237,500 additional reservists are somewhere among the remaining 186 million citizens served by career departments.
In reality, many of today's successful fire departments find positions for just about any citizen who has a needed talent and who can pass the department's application process. For example, my department has a gifted citizen who works in the IT field. He assists the city's IT staffer to design and install our computer software and he updates our reporting system. He has a better knowledge of the department's needs and operations than the city staffer and he translates that knowledge into savings that extended our IT budget.
Others who may wish to become fully trained firefighters have specialties that come together during an emergency. One of my firefighters, a former school teacher, is assigned as the chauffeur for the rescue truck. She knows the apparatus and equipment backward and forward, yet that is her specialty in serving as a firefighter and our community. She frees better-qualified firefighters to handle other duties on scene.
Why shouldn't volunteers or reserves, who would allow us to increase the staffing on our apparatus, fill some of the tasks?
Before slamming the door on this idea, let's look at a couple of scenarios. For more than three decades, the United Kingdom has referred to part-time or paid-on-call personnel as "retained" firefighters. Retained firefighters can staff a station side by side with career firefighters or, in less populated areas, entirely staff a station when there is an emergency, similar to American paid-on-call firefighters. In Ireland, the firefighters protecting 46 of 65 fire stations are retained. Retained firefighters are represented by a national union and have a labor contract separate from their career counterparts. They must meet or exceed the standards set forth by the U.K.'s Home Office and report through the chain of command to the brigade's chief fire officer and civilian board of directors.
For those who still want to dismiss the idea of reserve firefighters, stop and look at the profile of the U.S. military since Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Today, Air Force reserve personnel fly nearly one-third of all sorties — from combat to logistics — with the same precision and professionalism as their active-duty counterparts. Army, Navy and Marine reserve units have been activated for the past eight years to fight in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Elements of the National Guard have served in both combat and support roles, integrated into a nearly seamless role under the most difficult of conditions.
Thinking outside the box on staffing ultimately may protect more firefighters and reduce firefighter deaths and injuries by providing adequate staffing on every piece of fire equipment dispatched to the scene. Reserve firefighters, especially in financially strapped cities, may also strengthen the ranks of labor as they have in the United Kingdom — if unions also would see it as an opportunity. The alternative may be the fulfillment of the dire prediction written earlier of forced consolidations or mergers.
In short, the NFPA's fire department profile has told us that currently the number of firefighters in the United States is holding its own. But we have an untouched resource if we encourage citizens to come forward to assist their local fire service and be a part of the team that protects their local community. The challenges are that we have to think creatively and provide opportunities while welcoming them into our fire service culture. And we need the collective courage to try a new idea designed to help solve both economic and safety concerns.
Chief Robert R. Rielage, CFO, EFO, MIFireE, is the chief of Wyoming (Ohio) Fire-EMS, a 78-member combination fire department bordering Cincinnati. He previously served as the fire marshal of the state of Ohio. A graduate of the Kennedy School's Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at Harvard University, Rielage holds a master's degree in public administration from Norwich University and is the immediate past-president of the Institution of Fire Engineers-USA Branch. He is a member of the FIRE CHIEF Editorial Advisory Board.
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